Where are the workers! (The NHS vs Private Health Care)

Member Name: JacintaZoo

Product:	The NHS vs Private Health Care
Date:	29/11/00 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: n/a

Disadvantages: n/a

NHS and Private health care systems both have their advantages. NHS offers a free system of healthcare for all people, which essentially means that nobody is left dying in the street because they cannot afford to seek medical attention.

The private health care system also has its benefits. The fact that it is privately funded means that demand for treatment, new technology, and manpower is met.

However, the latter is the main bone of contention in this argument. The fact is that manpower is the major barrier standing between these two systems co-exisisting.

Take what is happening in the dental profession as an example. The government have pledged that by September 2001 everyone will have access to an NHS dentist. They are ploughing £100 million into achieving this task, with incentives including modernising dental practices, loyalty payements to dentists, dental hotlines where you phone up to find out where your nearest dentist is and walk-in dental access centres.

These are just a few of their ideas, which the General Dental Council was enthralled to hear of. However, the British Dental Association was more quick to be critical.

They pointed out, and rightly so in my opinion, that there was absolutely nothing said about how they intend to attaract dentists who are in private healthcare back into the NHS.

It's like providing the bricks but supplying no builders and expecting the house to build itself.

Overall in the NHS there are not enough 'bricks' to build the kind of system which we want. We know that. There just isn't enough money available, because the demand keeps growing all the time.

My fear is that as the private healthcare system becomes more able to provide that kind of funding the NHS will eventually stop being able to provide any kind of service because the people just won't be there to deliver.

My hope is however that this being a healthCARE system that the kind of people
going into it will actually 'care' enough to be a part of the soultion and not of the problem.

Summary: